Charles L. Griswold Jr., Adam Smith and the Virtues of Englightenment

This article argues that Adam Smith's notion of sympathy and the impartial spectator in his work The Theory of Moral Sentiments [1759] connects the individual to society. In this work, Smith's economics are far more complex than mere self-interest as a driver of commerce. Self-interest functions within a socio-ethical framework that limits excess and narcissism. However, morality was not based on normative assumptions for Smith and Hume. Morality was directly linked to social and cognitive processes in which the approbation of others was important. In other words, behaviour was based on the perceptions of others; therefore, action was to be adjusted to obtain sympathy. The impartial spectator refers to the cognitive process in which moral assessments are made. Therefore, the empiricism of Smith differs from determinism as related to physical causation because it operates through habituation and/or socialisation that can accommodate change and variation. Clearly, the socio-cu...

The Emergence of Impartiality , 2014

In the paper I argue that Smith's impartial spectator is a revenant of a well-known figure of Ancient philosophy, namely the parrhesiast. Like him, the impartial specator stands for an authority that we need to "pull off th emysterious veil of self-delusion". The crucial difference is that Smith's conceptualizes the impartical spectator as a stranger, while ancient parrhesiast is normally considered as a close friend. Hence, Smith's impartical spectator marks a particular type of objectivity, since he embodies a viewpoint, which is within and beyond society at the same time.

RIIM

I reconstruct here the implicit rationale of Smith's ethical system, which unites in a single and consistent theory the most valuable features of both ancient virtue ethics and modern deontology. I propose that Smith could do this because of his approach to what I call "sympathetic impartiality", and the pretension of universality that arises from it. In Smith's theory, sentiments are moralized through the impartial spectator procedure which, willingly or not, changes the moral axis from emotivism to practical reason. * Paper delivered at the American Philosophical Association Meeting held in 2004. I am most indebted to Samuel Fleischaker, Douglas Den Uyl and Eric Schleisser's comments on the draft of this paper.

Adam Smith Review, 2014

According to Adam Smith, when we simulate the actions of others we also evaluate their actions, and thereby sympathize with their condition. I argue that the ‘practical’ simulations of perception discussed in Smith's 'On the External Senses' (ES) share an evaluative component: guiding the body’s interaction with objects in a way that support its health and avoid its harm. Not only does such a discussion help elucidate Smith’s early thoughts about perception in ES, but how ES pre-figures and connects with his later, more developed views of morality and social interaction. It also provides a basis for connecting Smith’s account of perception with recent research in neuroscience, as I argue in this paper’s conclusion.

Fictional Worlds and Philosophical Reflection, 2022

The Vicegerent of God? On the Authority of Adam Smith's Impartial Spectator, 2019

Economia e Sociedade, 2018

Why has the "Adam Smith Problem" recently been discussed in the literature? Although most historians of economic thought regard the problem solved, these discussions cast doubt on this apparent solution. This article suggests that the "Adam Smith Problem" may originate from the concept of the human being developed by Smith in the "Theory of Moral Sentiments": in this book, human beings can be understood as composed of an empirical and a (quasi) transcendental side, in the form of the impartial spectator. It is argued that it is the tension between these two parts which creates supposed inconsistencies between aspects of the "Theory of Moral Sentiments" and the "Wealth of Nations" like, for example, the role of sympathy and self-interest in each of these books.

Society, 2022

With Being Me Being You, Samuel Fleischacker provides a reconstruction and defense of Adam Smith's account of empathy, and the role it plays in building moral consensus, motivating moral behavior, and correcting our biases, prejudices, and tendency to demonize one another. He sees this book as an intervention in recent debates about the role that empathy plays in our morality. For some, such as Paul Bloom, Joshua Greene, Jesse Prinz, and others, empathy, or our capacity for fellow-feeling, tends to misguide us in the best of cases, and more often reinforces faction and tribalism in morals and politics. These utilitarians, as Fleischacker refers to them, propose that empathy take a back seat to cost-benefit analysis in moral decision-making. As an intervention, the book is largely successful. Fleischacker's defense of empathy is nuanced and escapes the myopic enthusiasm to which many partisans of empathy are prone. Anyone looking to understand the relationship between empathy and morality would do well to grapple with Being Me Being You. Still, Fleischacker overlooks that Smith would most likely be less convinced of the idea that greater empathy can help us overcome the great challenges of our time. In Chapter 1, Fleischacker clarifies the concept of empathy. He distinguishes empathy from sympathy: 'we use 'empathy' for the sharing of feelings, and 'sympathy' for caring for others' (p. 2). According to Fleischacker, empathy is a "sharing of feeling that comes about via either contagion or projection" (p. 3). Contagion is an unreflective process whereby we "catch" the sentiments of others; projection is the process by which we place ourselves "in the shoes" of another via imagination (p. 3). He labels the empathy of contagion "Humean